Essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2018;
(cited in BAE 2015, 2016, 2020); PUSHCART poetry finalist
By Serhiy Zhadan
Translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps *** You will never write about how it all really was. You won’t dare, you’ll keep it to yourself, put it aside, keep it in the dark. You’ll talk about literature, when you should talk about life, it’s life that rushes out into the… Read more »
By Jacques Viau Renaud
Translated from the Spanish by Ariel Francisco Homeland Homeland from your starved latitude I felt my people rise through sonorous essences and heavy breaths. Homeland I felt how you grip through my blood squeezing my throat bruising my neck screaming along to my song. I witnessed your anguish from afar blooming in treetops erupting… Read more »
By Bożena Boba-Dyga
Translated from the Polish by Ewa Chrusciel Leopolis semper fidelis Seemed like forever and ever Until Stalin stole it And now Putler bombs it You’ll see, you scum You will see Soot of Moscow, smoking ruins of your cities Polluted Forever cursed and dead There won’t be anybody left to rebuild When stone… Read more »
By Kateryna Devdera
Translated from the Ukrainian by Bożena Boba-Dyga and Ewa Chrusciel The biggest dream: to be with you all at Easter To gather for Easter. This Easter. Greetings, my family; what’s new, Mom? Mom is baking bread as always. My dear ones are all alive. My peace of mind quivers on a line. “My” dear… Read more »
By Mariangela Gualtieri and Cristina Viti
translated from the Italian by Cristina Viti Aidoios The word Αἰδοῖος is untranslatable. It is connected to the particular kind of respect due to an unfortunate person who is begging us… It is not to our credit that neither French nor, as far as I know, any other modern language has a word… Read more »
By Justyna Bargielska and Maria Jastrzębska
translated from the Polish by Maria Jastrzębska Bug There was only one and he died instantly. Someone had trodden on him on the first step, if you count from the bottom, or on the last if you count from the top. Something poured out of him as he lay there. My daughter asked if… Read more »
By RoodlyLaurore and Jerrice J. Baptiste
translated from the French by Jerrice J. Baptiste In the hollow of a dark and quiet mountain, where the wind stops blowing, leaves of the trees are silent birds don’t sing. You don’t even hear the sound of silence. It was midnight, the sky was overcast no moon, no stars a mysterious but… Read more »
By Małgorzata Lebda and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
translated from the Polish Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese fire: cleansing into the lid of a big jar father pours methylated spirits lets me set it on fire over the flame he singes the cold body of a duck heart or liver? he asks though he knows that mother will save the liver for me apparently thanks… Read more »
By Astrid Cabral and Alexis Levitin
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin Obstacle Because of poetry beans burn milk spills one forgets to change clothes go inside out the baby cries in hunger one misses the train. But one goes on. Who knows to where, to what anonymous cloud. With the Word, the Poem Don’t put another music… Read more »
By Boris A. Novak
translated from the Slovene by the author from THE DOORS OF NO RETURN (fragments from the epos) Book One: MAPS OF NOSTALGIA Notebook One: THE ADDRESS Canto Two: THE ANCESTRAL TREE 1 … I was a reflection on the quick mirror of the water, and I was a shadow on the running window… Read more »
By Guillaume Apollinaire and Lynn Levin
Translated from the French by Lynn Levin The Mirabeau Bridge Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine And so our loves Must I recall again How joy always followed pain Come the night come the day The hours pass here I stay Your hands in my hands let’s linger face to face While underneath… Read more »
By Amir Or and Seth Michelson
from CHILD translated from the Hebrew by Seth Michelson Stricken A fallen angel always remembers height is depth, the wings – the fear; how his heart exfoliated leaf by leaf till left stark naked. An angel that fell from love to hope flaps its ghost wings in vain; parched and starved, his hands stretched… Read more »
By Giuseppe Ungaretti and Wally Swist
translated from Italian by Wally Swist from L’Allegria/Cheerfulness (Poems 1914-1919) Nostalgia When night fades just before the springtime and it is a rare person who passes Over Paris a dark color weeping thickens In a poem of a bridge I contemplate the incalculable silence of a slender girl Our afflictions merge together And how… Read more »
By Aleš Mustar and Manja Maksimovič
translated from Slovenian by Manja Maksimovič On the Charles Bridge instead of a passion play hordes of tourists with short-term memory loss unknowingly enact the role of refugees. There is no more space for genuine puppeteers. In souvenir shops the Good Soldier Švejk is rarely represented. He has been replaced by Hello Kitty. At… Read more »
By Wojciech Bonowicz and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese Second bell Hens are for the motherland ducks are against. And the dog is divided. For a moment he turns his bloodshot eyes to the sky. Then his gaze drops to the road again. In dust up to his armpits comes a toothless man who likes to tease.… Read more »
By Natalka Bilotserkivets, Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky
translated from Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky Bridge The air is as still and hot as my body. Arched like a bridge over a river. It’s so quiet—the nightingales must be drinking their own black alcohol. No sounds. Only color and shades spread out across the water. Face up—that’s how it… Read more »
By Ute von Funcke and Stuart Friebert
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from German by the author and Stuart Friebert
By Marcin Świetlicki and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
By Marcin Świetlicki and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
By Marcin Świetlicki and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
By Nguyen Quang Thieu and Bruce Weigl
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Vietnamese by Bruce Weigl
By Nguyen Quang Thieu and Bruce Weigl
This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Vietnamese by Bruce Weigl
By Irene Bablé Marruffi
Translated from Spanish by Stephen Kessler The sky cut up by bars, cells of so many hopeless jails The rounded light of the ox’s eye and a sailor once more defying the storm. Sky bloody with senseless falling missiles, because of so many treasured hatreds. The most intense blue of a huge twilight under… Read more »
By Piotr Maur
Translated from Polish by Katarzyna Jakubiak [a small, local church. we hide there] a small, local church. we hide there from the pouring rain. a few sniffling saints watch us curiously with their eyes weathered by looking into eternity. women nailed for ever to the first rows raise prayers to christ, who quite effectively… Read more »
By Lidija Dimkovska
Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska, and Patricia Marsh Ingrid Jonker writes to Olivera Korveziroska A bullet in the head would do you good, a jump off a bridge or a cut wrist, hydrochloric acid in your tea, your husband’s belt round your neck, at the wrong time, in the wrong place death is… Read more »
By Serhiy Zhadan, Wanda Phipps, Virlana Tkacz and Dzvinia Orlowsky
translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, Yale University Press, 2019. Interview conducted by Dzvinia Orlowsky, July 8, 2019 DO: Thank you, Virlana, for taking the time to speak with me about your and Wanda Phipp’s process in translating this extraordinary collection. I’d like to begin by quoting lines from one of Zhadan’s poems… Read more »
By Liliana Ancalao and Seth Michelson
to wash clothes on a saturday afternoon among the workers shot during the rural strikes of 1920 and 1921 there were surely indigenous men who forty years earlier had freely roamed the southern territories the peasants as they were called asked for saturday afternoon to wash clothes those whom we’d today call the indigent williches
By Jaime Huenún and Cynthia Steele
Mari Epu He drank drops of light from a wooden cup, cold sweat of the resilient, delirious dead. That’s why he dances and lives amid stiff ferns, flinging himself onto the fallow mud. They saw him on the summit, singing demented, trembling and soaking wet, like an old nag. He
By Yang Xiaobin and Canaan Morse
Political Poem All the guns are buried in the sky awaiting Autumn’s order to disarm A full barrage lifts up the legendary palace lifts up the joking emperor All the guns are explicating me their injuries also in the silent parts bleeding days, bullets are intelligent All of my selves are pummeling the allies
By Dzvinia Orlowsky
A little sun, Honey Like the bees of Persephone No one can free a boat unanchored, hear the shadow shod in fur, track down fear this dense forest. We are left with kisses, Tingling tiny bees that die On leaving their hive Rustling In translucent underbrush of Their night. Home: Taygetus’ thick wood,
By Ute von Funcke and Stuart Friebert
This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from German by Stuart Friebert
By Aleš Šteger and Brian Henry
This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Slovenian by Brian Henry
By Cesare Pavese and Richard Jackson
This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Italian by Richard Jackson
By Krystyna Miłobędzka and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
By Jacek Dehnel and Karen Kovacik
This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Polish by Karen Kovacik
By Edoardo Olmi and Anna Aresi
This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. From R: exist-stance (2017). Translated from Italian by Anna Aresi.
By Edoardo Olmi and Anna Aresi
This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. From R: exist-stance (2017). Translated from Italian by Anna Aresi.
By Josip Osti and Martha Kosir
translated from the Slovene by Martha Kosir AN UNWRITTEN POEM I dreamt of a poem: beautiful and wholesome. A polished crystal ball. An open cage, filled with the golden, autumn brightness of the Karst. Inside it, emptiness that cradled a music box in its heart. The sound of a dead bird’s flapping wings. And… Read more »
By María Negroni and Allison A. deFreese
translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese Translator’s note: These translated poems are excerpts from Elegía Joseph Cornell/Elegy for Joseph Cornell, an experimental book by María Negroni (Spanish language, Argentina) about Joseph Cornell–as well as about his subjects (including “Godiva” and other actors—among them, children–from his fairytale film Children’s Party). Elegy for Joseph Cornell… Read more »
By Vasyl Makhno and Olena Jennings
translated from Ukrainian by Olena Jennings the poem you wrote with a fox’s claw on the way to Berlin – and about which you were silent and now you say: here it is, catch that’s why I keep this house and its transparent walls where I settled with you in the thistle’s light –… Read more »
By Jacek Gutorow and Piotr Florczyk
translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk I know, simplicity isn’t in demand. Minimalism, yes, but nothing excessive (maybe a spiderweb in the corner of the poem). I don’t care for comparisons. I cross out, proofread, clean up. I leave one loose thread. Jacek Gutorow is one of Poland’s premier contemporary poets,… Read more »
By Krystyna Dąbrowska and Karen Kovacik
translated from Polish by Karen Kovacik Contraband Years ago, when Mrs. Kubicka saw a plane in the sky, she’d throw down her scythe and hide in the grain. Now she’s flying for the first time to her daughter in America. Who’s getting married, Mrs. Kubicka says, to some good-for-nothing. Under her clothes, she’s smuggling… Read more »
By Artur Grabowski and Artur Sebastian Rosman
translated from Polish by Artur Sebastian Rosman TRIPTYCH (part I – left panel) Early morning (not rosy-fingered dawn) they sleep still in the tent. I step out onto a narrow path above a plate-glass lake, take in the scent, wet flesh, of fresh-cut wood; springing on loose boards, I sound out empty knocks… Read more »
By Davide Rondoni and Dr Gregory Pell
translated from Italian by Gregory M. Pell At times it seems the product of nothingness the day spent on trollies or in café showcases. Our cities lack sentinels, rather those who stay awake do so by trade or out of distrust. And the enemy, no one, has ever seen him coming. … Read more »
By Mariadonata Villa and Ann Kilgo
translated by Ann G. Kilgo from THE SIEGE by Mariadonata Villa Raffaelli Editore, 2012 from Within the City Walls Good Friday in the void I plant tulips and a few sea anemones an absurd spring on this day, and for tomorrow a hole of silence I dreamed of women… Read more »
By Lidija Dimkovska
Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh You, who were so alive, … Read more »
By Lidija Dimkovska
Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh What bed will I breathe my last on? On some train, on some crossroads? With the curtain up or down? At noon or at dead of night? Is it fate, a curse or good luck to breathe your last in someone’s presence? A part of… Read more »
By Marc Delouze
Translated from French by Richard Jackson #7 The poem says to the blind what the poet does not see #11 Facing the seas A cliff of words Cracks open #35 Forgotten in the dust of ruins the bricks of memory #37 My words are no more than the threads a spider’s… Read more »
By Ute von Funcke
Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert She climbed into her red canoe without a paddle on a road heavy as lead, without water apples in her pack, absent a future, postcards in gaping shoes, dead holiday greetings yesterday, superseded, freezes, in the faces behind the blinds, the dark’s falling guillotines in the last… Read more »
By Ute von Funcke
Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert Too soon the night’s gobbled up the evening its light smothered wildly propelling winds and dark fingers of clouds to catch the hope of those fleeing on the rotting wood of the footbridge over the gorge Ute von Funcke, who wrote plays for children before turning… Read more » Receive news, reviews, interviews, and more in your inbox! Plus be the first to hear about our latest issues, contests, and events.
Mari Epu
Poem by Jaime Huenún Villa,
Translated from Spanish by Cynthia Steele
Two Poems by Yang Xiaobin
Translated from Chinese by Canaan Morse
Take from my open hands
By Osip Emilievich Mandelstam, 1920
The Direction of the Arrow
An Old Poet
Poetical
from Anaglyphs
Foreign Languages
Prenestina rulsz
traveling brother
Three Poems by Josip Osti
Two Poems by María Negroni
Berlin
Loose Thread
Four Poems by Krystyna Dąbrowska
Triptych
Four Poems by Davide Rondoni
Three Poems by Mariadonata Villa
At the Last Judgement
Deathbed Poem
6 Poems
The Red Canoe
Night Adrift
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